No, Mr. President, 1776 Wasn't Anything Like Castro's 1959 Putsch

Cuban President Raul Castro, right, cheers next to U.S. President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and their daughters Sasha and Malia, at the start of a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national baseball team, in Havana, Cuba. Obama's remarks earlier about the equivalency of the U.S. and Cuban revolutions won no such cheers here in the U.S. (AP)

Diplomacy: In one of his last acts in Havana, President Obama threw out a false equivalency between the American Revolution and Cuba's 1959 communist takeover. What are we to make of a U.S. president who embraces such hoary Marxist equivalencies?

In his Tuesday address to the Cuban people, Obama declared that the communist takeover that led to the Castros' 57-year dictatorship was a “liberation movement,” same as America’s 1776 revolution. Obama's well-known for his false equivalencies, but this one stands out for its idiocy.

"Here’s my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people,” Obama said."The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution, America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world, these ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy."

It must have drawn a stifled horse-laugh from Cuban military dictator Raul Castro.

Because the fact is, the American Revolution -- whose courageous patriots pledged "to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor" -- wasn't anything like the Castroites' 1959 communist takeover. The latter was a gang of thugs' brutal destruction of a weak democracy with the sneaky aim of installing a totalitarian tyranny. The American patriots of 1776 were all about a free press, a fiery and open interplay of ideas, and the bravely signed names of 56 men of liberty standing up for what they believed in.

The bearded Castroite revolutionaries were a different beast altogether. They claimed to favor democracy as part of their Orwellian Newspeak, making use of willing media toadies such as New York Times correspondent Herbert Matthews to fool U.S. policymakers. But for those on the ground, the Castroite takeover was nothing but a brutal leftist oligarchy intent on installing a communist agenda and turning Cuba into a Soviet satellite. From the very beginning, the Castroites and their so-called revolution had absolutely no democratic ideals. None.

Raul himself was a leading communist party member from the very start, and his brother Fidel ripped the false mask of democracy off to reveal his true communist face once he entrenched himself as the Maximo Lider and couldn't be thrown out. The Castroites, including the dictator who stood at Obama's elbow as he spoke, shot their way to power and have since turned Cuba into a totalitarian hellhole.

To compare the U.S. to Cuba is odious. Did George Washington shoot dissidents by firing squad in summary executions to assure his supremacy of power? Did Washington imprison thousands, including teenagers, executing many into open-pit mass graves as now-vaunted "revolutionary" Che Guevara did, leering like a psychopath? Such were the accounts of survivors interviewed by writer Humberto Fontova and described in his 2005 book, "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant."

Did Jefferson load up the dungeons with political prisoners? Did Washington expropriate private property of political opponents, right down to their wedding rings? Did John Jay end freedom to travel? Did Madison sic turba mobs to throw eggs and excrement against dissidents in their homes? Did Adams drive millions from their homes to uncertain fates on leaky boats? Did Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton default on billions of dollars of debt of hated creditors, as Castro did? Exactly the opposite.

That's the real record of the Castro "revolution."

And for that reason, there is so much wrong with what Obama said in attempting to equivocate the two revolutions. To put the two events in the same sentence is an insult to the U.S. and all the freedom and prosperity its revolution achieved, against the horrific failure of Castro's communism

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